Quotes from Will Durant

The spirit of property doubles a man's strength. It is certain that the possessor of an estate will cultivate his own inheritance better than that of another.

Life, says a fine Greek adage, is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.)

The Creator has given us souls equal to all the world, and yet satiable not even with a world.

The simplest meaning of life, then, is joy -- the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use. Perhaps if we used our arms and legs we would be happy too;

Magnanimity in politics," said Edmund Burke, "is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great empire and little minds go ill together

What is wisdom? It is an application of experience to present problems, a view of the part in the light of the whole, a perspective of the moment in the vista of years past and years to come.

When mere creeds or ceremonies usurp priority over moral excellence as a test of religion, religion has disappeared

The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not by reason.

Desire, not experience, is the essence of life; experience becomes the tool of desire in the enlightenment of mind and the pursuit of ends.

History, said Bacon, is the planks of a shipwreck; more of the past is lost than has been saved.

There are only three things worth while in this world—justice, beauty and truth; and perhaps none of them can be defined.

struggle is the indispensable accompaniment of progress

A bit of wisdom is a joy forever.

Equality of power is an unstable condition; men are by nature unequal; and "he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

Let us live always as we live now, and let us not abandon the names that we have given each other in our first love. … You and I must always remain young, and you shall always be beautiful to me. We must keep no count of the years.

If men were entirely social, man would stagnate; a certain alloy of individualism and competition is required to make the human species survive and grow.

Society is a growth in time, not a syllogism in logic; and when the past is put out through the door it comes in at the window.

Greece did not begin civilization—it inherited far more civilization than it began; it was the spoiled heir of three millenniums of arts and sciences brought to its cities from the Near East by the fortunes of trade and war. In studying and honoring the Near East we shall be acknowledging a debt long due to the real founders of European and American civilization.

The great majority of men are natural dunces and sluggards; in any system whatever these men will sink to the bottom; and to help them with state subsidies is "like pouring water into a leaking cask." Such people must be ruled in politics and directed in industry; with their consent if possible, without it if necessary.

He says to his wife, in the early years of their marriage: "Let us live always as we live now, and let us not abandon the names that we have given each other in our first love. … You and I must always remain young, and you shall always be beautiful to me. We must keep no count of the years.

In other cities the process of decentralizing wealth was not so legal: the debtors of Mytilene massacred their creditors en masse, and excused themselves on the ground that they were hungry; the democrats of Argos (370) suddenly fell upon the rich, killed twelve hundred of them, and confiscated their property.

Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style which has most power to move men... It's object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and last hold of the imagination. (p.162/543)

Men in general are so constituted that there is nothing they will endure with so little patience as that views which they believe to be true should be counted crimes against the laws . . .

dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.